Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) started Tuesday to reinstall seals and cameras in North Korea's plutonium reprocessing plant, a source close to the agency said, according to dpa. On Monday, the Vienna-based agency announced that the reclusive Stalinist state had reversed its ban on IAEA inspections, after the United States struck the country from its terrorism blacklist on Saturday. In September, North Korea had ordered the IAEA to remove monitoring technology from its plutonium reprocessing facility in its Yongbyon nuclear complex. The ban was extended to all nuclear installations last week. The stalemate ended when Pyonyang agreed to a mechanism for verifying the details of all of its nuclear activities, while Washington removed the country from its state sponsors of terrorism list. An IAEA official said that the process of monitoring North Korea's nuclear installations had resumed. He could not confirm whether North Korea had also restarted unloading nuclear fuel from its reactor, a further disabling step announced by Pyongyang on Monday. IAEA experts are stationed permanently in Yongbyon to monitor the freeze and disablement of the complex that North Korea has agreed to in six-party talks with the US, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia, in exchange for improved diplomatic and economic relations, including energy and humanitarian aid. The Yongbyon facilities include a reactor, a nuclear fuel fabrication plant and the reprocessing facility, which was used to produce plutonium for North Korea's nuclear explosion test in 2006.
